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Sound 101 – How to read and understand microphone specs

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Microphones come with a whole lot of technical and confusing sounding specifications. Ultimately, what matters to people most is how they sound. But not all sounds are created equally, nor are all microphones. Different types of microphones and different specs of the same type of microphone handle certain sounds better than others, and some are just better built.

Understanding those specs can give you some idea of microphone suitability for your video and audio projects before you’ve even heard them, but what do they all mean? In this video, Andrew from Deity talks us through the five most common microphone specs and what they mean.

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How to create separation between model and background in Photoshop

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Every Monday I ask my FB Page community to participate in my -Share-a-Shoot- post whereupon they share a recent shot they’ve taken in exchange for some feedback from myself. I’ve been doing this every week for what feels like years now, and each and every week I am often mentioning the same things in my responses. Often it’s the subject being lit from below, badly placed hair lights, awkward posing and so on. But the one area that I probably talk about the most is ensuring you have a clear separation between subject and background.

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How to make sure you don’t lose your presets, brushes and actions when you upgrade Photoshop

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There’s been a lot of drama recently over the latest Photoshop updates, especially for Mac users. But regardless of compatibility issues, new bugs or whatever, many people put off upgrading to the latest version simply because they’re worried about losing their presets, despite the advantages the latest edition of Photoshop may offer.

In this video, Colin Smith at PhotoshopCAFE walks us through how to keep our presets when upgrading, as well as how to share them with others.

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How to film an epic B-roll sequence entirely handheld

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B-roll adds value to your videos and makes them more dynamic, and there are plenty of ways to shoot an epic one. One of the most common tips is to stabilize your camera, be it with a gimbal, a steadicam, a slider, or even a tripod. However, you can get a pretty awesome B-roll sequence even handheld. Josh Yeo of MAKE. ART. NOW. teamed up with Tommy Callaway to do it, and they ended up with some interesting footage. In this video, they take you behind the scenes to show you how they did it and inspire you to try something similar yourself.

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This is how table affects light when photographing wine bottles

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There are many things to pay attention to if you want to take flawless product photos. One of them is certainly the surface you use for placing the products. While it can be important how it looks, the table you use also affects the light. In this video, Dustin Dolby of workphlo shows you just how much of a difference it can make when you use tables of different sizes.

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How to create the “Corona” lighting effect on your subjects

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I’m just gonna come clean here and say that I just made up the name ‘corona’ for this lighting setup. In fact, the word corona is a commonly used term with solar eclipses. During an eclipse, we can often see the moon silhouetted against a ring of light and the word corona is often used to describe that halo of light we see around the moon.

As we explain this lighting, my reasoning for calling this setup ‘corona’, should start to make a bit more sense because we are actually trying to achieve a similar lighting eclipse look by adding a ring of light around our subject.

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Five tips to record better quality sound with your shotgun microphone

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Shotgun microphones are the go-to for many filmmakers when recording audio. Whether it’s on-camera or boomed overhead of your subject, they offer a great ability to isolate the subject from the environmental noise around them.

But a lot of people don’t have great experiences with shotgun mics, because they’re not sure on exactly how to use them. Sure, it might be better than they’d get with the in-camera mics, but it can still be made even better. In this video, Kai Wong offers up five tips to help improve your shotgun mic recordings.

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Here are 10 microphone tips to improve the audio quality in your videos

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Audio is often the biggest challenge for filmmakers, especially newer ones. Most people just coming into the world of video don’t realise how much of a big deal it really is to get good quality audio. And while can be quite gear dependent, you don’t always need the most expensive kit to get decent quality sound. In this video, filmmakers Parker Walbeck and Nick Sales talk though their top ten tips and techniques for getting good quality sound for your videos.

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How to quickly match colours for fast composites in Photoshop

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One of the things many people struggle with when it comes to composites is matching the colours of the two (or more) shots. Manually dragging sliders around and trying to match two completely different images is just plain tricky, especially if you don’t have a lot of experience with it.

But this tip from photographer and digital artist, Dustin Valkema shows how we can very quickly match up two or more images together for compositing using a simple curves adjustment and a little known option it offers in the “auto” settings.

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